GRAZ, Austria (AP) — A shooter opened fire inside a school in Austria’s second-biggest city Tuesday, killing nine people, authorities said.
At least 12 others were wounded in the attack, and the gunman later died by suicide in a bathroom in the school in Graz, officials said.
Details about the suspect's motive, as well as information about the victims, were not immediately available.
Here's what we know:
Nine people were killed
The shooter opened fire at a school in Graz, killing nine people and wounding at least 12 others before taking his own life, authorities said.
Special forces were among those sent to the BORG Dreierschützengasse high school, about a kilometer (over half a mile) from Graz’s historic center, after a call at 10 a.m.
At 11:30 a.m., police wrote on social network X that the school had been evacuated and everyone had been taken to a safe meeting point.
Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said there would be three days of national mourning, with the Austrian flag lowered to half-staff and a national minute of mourning at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
“A school is more than just a place of learning," Stocker said. “It is a space of trust, of security, of the future. The fact that this safe space was shattered by such an act of violence leaves us speechless.”
Graz, Austria’s second-biggest city, is located in the southeast of the country and has about 300,000 inhabitants.
Gunman was a former student
The gunman was a former student at the school who didn’t finish his studies, Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said. His name has not been made public in line with Austrian privacy rules.
Authorities say he was a 21-year-old Austrian man who had two weapons, which he appeared to have owned legally.
Police said they didn’t immediately have information on the man’s motive, but said he died by suicide in a toilet after the attack.
Other major attacks in Austria
Tuesday’s violence appeared to be the deadliest attack in Austria’s postwar history.
Other attacks in the country include when four people were killed in Vienna in 2020 and the suspect, a sympathizer of the Islamic State group, also died in a shooting that stunned the Austrian capital. More than 20 other people, including a police officer, were wounded.
In 2019, a 25-year-old man turned himself in to Austrian police after he killed his ex-girlfriend, her family and her new boyfriend in the Alpine resort town of Kitzbuehel. And almost exactly 10 years ago, on June 20, 2015, a man killed three people and injured more than 30 when he drove through a crowd in downtown Graz with an SUV.
Gun culture in Austria
Austria has some of the more liberal gun laws in the European Union. Traditionally, many in the Alpine country go hunting and it’s more common to carry a weapon for that and less for self-defense.
Some weapons, such as rifles and shotguns that must be reloaded manually after each shot, can be purchased in Austria from the age of 18 without a permit. Gun dealers only need to check if there’s no weapons ban on the buyer, and the weapon is then added to the central weapons register.
Other weapons, such as repeating shotguns or semi-automatic firearms, are more difficult to acquire — buyers need a gun ownership card and a firearms pass.
